Bangladesh has ordered 24 Yakovlev Yak-130 advanced jet trainers, Russian media report, in a $800 million deal it will finance thanks to a soft Russian loan. (Wikipedia photo)
Posted on 01/28/2014 9:22:42 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
MOSCOW --- Bangladesh ordered 24 Russian Yak-130 light fighter jets worth $800 million in the final quarter of last year, a Russian newspaper reported Tuesday.
The deal was paid for with a loan extended by Moscow to the country a year ago, the director of Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport said in a separate interview published by Kommersant on Monday, without disclosing the deal’s price tag.
The newspaper said Tuesday that the sale was worth $800 million, citing unnamed sources in the defense industry. The planes are to be fitted with English-language cockpits and delivery is scheduled to begin next year.
The Yak-130 is a lightweight subsonic trainer aircraft designed to mimic the cockpit and handling capabilities of Russia’s more advanced fighters.
The plane can also be configured to carry a small payload of ground attack and air-to-air weapons.
Russia has targeted South Asia as a growth market for arms exports. The country delivered a refitted aircraft carrier, the INS Vikramaditya, to India earlier this month and is in the process of supplying Vietnam with six advanced attack submarines.
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Bangladesh has ordered 24 Yakovlev Yak-130 advanced jet trainers, Russian media report, in a $800 million deal it will finance thanks to a soft Russian loan. (Wikipedia photo)
Why does Bangladesh even need a military?
I’ll take one.
I wonder if Russia will ever get the loan repaid?
Bangladesh has pilots and airports, and in fact does manage to feed its people much better these days.
And it could use some functional aircraft. They have borders with sometimes difficult neighbors like Burma/Myanmar, and insurgents within their borders, as well as various groups drifting across the border with India, which has its own insurgent problems in Assam and Bengal.
They are, by far, the largest supplier of soldiers for UN missions in crap holes like Sudan, so they have a pretty good military funded by others with them supplying the bodies.
$800,000,000! What a poor country. Maybe the USA should give them more money?
Because it looks cool to have one.
Bangladeshis do a very good job of feeding themselves, as they possess the most fertile land in the world. It only takes something like a half-acre to feed a whole family year round.
Besides needing to maintain independence from Pakistan, they also have a common border with Myanmar (Burma). So they have some worries.
These are light attack/trainers, which are perfect for a country like Bangladesh, because they are cheap $33 million each, and much easier to maintain. Yet, they can provide ground attack and some air-to-air capability against a similar opponent.
Although India would likely take on the bulk of the fighting against Pakistan, Bangladesh is expected to do what they can, e.g. Denmark's role in NATO.
It's a Muslim country completely surrounded by a Hindu country. I'm sure that's part of it.
Not too difficult, I would think, since to attack Bangladesh Pakistan would need to fight its way clear across India. Which is by itself considerably more militarily powerful than Pakistan.
But that Hindu country fought a war that lead to Bangladesh becoming an independent country. Before it was part of Pakistan.
and to whom is such a security need directed at????
I can only imagine the political class’s need for
“internal security” measures against its own population
as the cause behind this purchase.
India poses no threat to Bangladesh and Pakistan no longer does either. That leaves just Bangladesh’s dysfunctional politics and its always restive populace as conditions that threaten the security of the state at any time.
Frankly I’m glad the planes are not coming from us. We let Pakistan play us for geopolitical fools for years, as they promoted their “cold-war stance with us” to obtain billions in arms that they really had only one desired interest for - use against India. I can only imagine one target the state is trying to impress, and warn, with these planes - their own people.
It was a nasty fight the first time. Myanmar, China, and Pakistan are all buddy-buddy, so perhaps not a cake walk this time either. Consider Spain's role in NATO. Those Russians were going to have to push a long way to get to Spain, but their border wasn't the logical place for the Spanish to start fighting the Russians.
Sorry. I don’t think that makes much sense.
India is 1.2B, Pakistan 180M people. It’s a little as if Canada was supposed to be worried about needing to defend itself against an invasion from Mexico.
Which leaves out of the equation that both Pakistan and India have nukes, now. Which if past history holds, as we can hope, means they won’t ever go back to fullbore war with each other.
If you dismiss 1.35 billion Chinese from the equation, then you have a point. Which would make your example analogous to the Norwegians not being worried about the NAZIs in 1938, because Hitler would first have to fight his way through the more populace and more powerful (on paper) French, British, and Poles. That worked out pretty well for the Norwegians as I recall.
Except that to get to Norway Hitler only had to make his way across essentially unarmed Denmark.
As you hopefully know, the Germans did not defeat the Brits and French in order to get at the Norwegians. They attacked Norway while the Sitzkrieg was still in effect on the Western Front.
My point is that it is pretty darn ludicrous to think that Pakistan poses a realistic conventional military threat to Bangladesh.
Now if they could get one over there, I suppose they could nuke Dacca. But I’m unclear why they would want to.
Check the order of sequence on Denmark/Norway and why it went down like that. Wasn’t going to happen without France and Britain sidelined.
Now tell me how you see a Sino-Indian war playing out, Pakistanis role, and what Pakistan’s war goals would be.
The history of countries taking a neutral stance in the belief that larger countries can/will defend them isn’t a very happy history.
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